"This isn't English class, so I'm not going to grade on grammar." Dangerous practice?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Throughout my seemingly endless collegiate career (when will it ever end? No one knows!), one thing has shown itself to be abundantly clear: science majors can not write. Alright, generalizations are bad for everyone, but it is my (somewhat limited) experience that if a person isn’t a humanities major, they can’t write a readable essay if their life depended on it. Don’t get me wrong, I see plenty of humanities majors who lack in the written communication department, but - as a whole- humanities majors seem to at least be able to communicate in a somewhat passable manner.

Woo, that was wordy.

While I understand that the emphasis in, say, a Biology degree is obviously Biology and not writing, I often wonder how professors can justify grading lab reports and not deducting for atrocious grammar. For instance, my friend is a Biology major and while she is incredibly intelligent in many ways, her writing is absolutely awful. I’m not just being a grammar snob here or anything, as she writes at what I would consider maybe a 9th grade level (she’s a college senior). Whenever she finishes up a lab report or essay (whether for Bio or some humanities class she’s taking), she asks me to look it over for her and while I am more than happy to oblige, I’m taken aback every single time. The girl seriously doesn’t know how to properly use a comma or a semi colon! If this were just limited to my friend, I’d just say she was a bad writer and forget about it, but this is a theme I see with all the science majors who ask me to check their work for them.

In the case of my friend, when I offer up tips for more complex writing, she often brushes it off and says, “Diosa, this is SCIENCE, ok. That stuff doesn’t matter! The professor wont care anyway. Science has a different type of writing that you just don’t get.” Alright, I’d buy that, except my major is Political Science and we use APA for our lab reports, too.

I’ve read some of my friends’ graded work and I’m always blown away by the way that the professors virtually ignore glaringly bad writing. I’m not talking about more complex things like proper semi colon use, but rather things like properly making a list (you know, with commas and such- very high level stuff!).

To me, this is a symptom of a much bigger problem that starts much earlier than college. I remember sitting in AP chemistry, physics, and geology and having the teachers tell the class that they absolutely, positively will not grade on grammar or spelling. Spelling I suppose I can understand (I mean, I can barely remember the names, let alone the proper spelling!), but grammar?

So, is it true? Does writing just not matter if you’re a “science person”?

As I see it, writing is a universal skill that we all should have a somewhat respectable grasp on- particularly people pursuing any type of collegiate education. Sure, not everyone needs to be able to write an essay without pronouns (I once had a professor who had this policy!), but surely everyone should be able to use commas and conjunctions properly. Right? Right? :eek:

Oh yes, and commence ripping apart my grammar in this post in 5. . . 4. . .3. . .2. . .

2

Yes, it’s an enormous mistake not to crack the grammar whip at every level of education. It is inexcusable that a senior in college is unable to punctuate sentences correctly. If she thinks it doesn’t matter because it’s science, then she’s stupid. No one should be issued a college degree if they can’t pass a basic writing test. No one should graduate high school unless they can pass a basic writing test.

3

I made it a practice not to grade on grammar when grading assignments and lab reports, since it was the science I was interested in. But maybe I should have deducted points for poor presentation.
But – and this is important – poor grammar was the LEAST of my complaints. I didn’t deduct points, but made big red marks around the following:
1.) The guy who wrote his report in the form of a spiral. He started at one corner and wrote all around the edge of the paper until he got to his starting corner, then moved slightly inward on the page, proceeding in this fashion until he reached the center, and ran out of blank paper.

2.) The Guy Who Couldn’t Spell to Save His Life. Deciphering his papers was a real challenge, filled with new physical concepts such as “Excelleration”*.

*“Accelent”, I wrote underneath.

4

Well, in her defense (if there even is one): if this is what she’s been told by her classmates and professors for four years, what on Earth is she supposed to think?

Until recently, the only non-science classes she took were lower divisions, so grammar wasn’t part of the grade then either (why? I don’t know). Actually, she was in the class with the professor I mentioned who said we weren’t allowed to use pronouns in our in-class essays. How she passed that class is a mystery to me (I think I was the only one in a class of 50 to get an A, though).

$10 says he didn’t get it. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

What? You actually graded this? If he turned that in to me it would have been returned to him ungraded.

I use rubrics when grading, and grammar is always a section, as well as presentation. It sucks that kids never get called on this until they encounter that one prof in college or grad school. It would be wonderful if we all had the same high standards for our students.

6

If it’s atrocious, mark it. Points don’t need to be deducted, IMHO, but students who give a shit, in general, don’t like their papers to be marked up.
ETA: In other news, when writing up reports for group projects, I was always elected (or chosen by default) to be the final editor of all our papers. I’ve always considered myself a good writer, and when I take my time, can churn out a nicely polished project.

I strongly disagree with the statement that technical writing is funadmentally different than creative writing in terms of structure. Style, of course, are very different, but the key in both is to effectively communicate your thoughts, ideas, and/or results to the reader. The grammar doesn’t change just because the genre does.

How’d you make big red marks around the spiral? :o

7

I think it is extremely important for science professors to grade on grammar as well as content.

In the real working world, which sadly many professors have no idea about, grammar is extremely important for, example, scientific and technical reports that go out to clients or to environmental or other regulatory agencies. If your reports/documentation are full of bad grammar, it makes one look uneducated and therefore the information presented may be looked at as less correct or less believable.

Then again, my high school and university science courses did have a focus on technical writing skills. I got dinged for spelling a lot. Grammar I know, but I cannot spell for shit [I love you spell checker].

8

All mechanical engineering majors where I went to school were required to take a technical writing course. In fact, I was a T.A. for that course twice. We are also required to take a two upper division lab courses where long reports on the experiments were assigned. You better believe that grammar counted. We didn’t mind, or even necessarily know, if a comma went where a semicolon belonged but students would be marked down if their communication wasn’t clear.

Good communication is essential for engineers. Depending on the product or design, lives could be at stake. If not lives, millions of dollars.

9

Absolutely, positively, definitely maybe.

I’ll say this - there are times that I don’t even grade on grammar in my English classes.

Ok, yeah, there’s a reason, though. It’s all about the six-trait rubric. If I’m teaching a specific concept (say, Voice), and I have the kids write a paragraph where I stipulate I’m grading on Voice, then I give them a score based on Voice, grammar be damned. Grammar falls under the Conventions category. It’s actually entirely possible (though unlikely) to get a very high score at the state level and have atrocious grammar, as grammar, at the most, only counts for 1/6 of the points. Messed up, but there you go.

However, I am of the opinion that Writing Across the Curriculum is a good thing.

10

You go to college, you should be able to function at a college level in all classes. I understand that a biology class isn’t very English-centric, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t be able to convey your thoughts in the written word.

The problem with that is that it doesn’t work very well the other way. English class is in everything, but not everything is in English class.

11

I completely agree. Grammar (and usage, punctuation, all that) is a foundational skill; if you can’t use your language properly, you’re crippled. Teachers and professors don’t do anyone any favors by letting grammar fall by the wayside.

12

Well, to me, it’s like algebra: everyone in college should have at least a moderate familiarity with algebra.

I’m not a “math person” in even the most general sense of the phrase (I’m pretty good at Statistics, strangely, but that’s neither here nor there) and yet, if you put some algebra equations in front of me, I could do them. Sure, it might not be as instinctual to me as it is to my “math” friends, but I can do it with probably 90% accuracy.

To me, that’s the same as a “math person” writing. Algebra is on the same intellectual level to me as 9th grade writing: commas, proper sentence structure (I had a friend who once spent an entire HOUR arguing with me as to why her sentence was correct. What was the sentence? It wasn’t a sentence, actually, but was more or less “went to the store.” I tried to explain to her that there was no subject and even showed her sentence diagramming, but to no avail!), and perhaps more advanced stuff like proper pronoun and semi colon use.

13

Actually, one of my professors mentioned that our school (Penn State) is putting more of a emphasis on proper spelling and grammar for all written assignments regardless of major. Engineer’s were/are infamous for having horrible writing skills and now all assignments are supposed to be written as though it was for an English class. I haven’t had any marks taken off any of my papers, but I have always been good at writing papers for English classes as well, so it may just be that my writing isn’t that bad to begin with.

I think it is a good idea because clear communication, especially with people outside your particular field of study, is going to be required at some time or another for any position, whether you’re an engineer or a programmer or in sales. And by judging some engineers I work with, maybe remedial English classes should be offered at work too.

14

I don’t think it’s imperative to grade on things like commas and semicolons, as long as the meaning is clear. But if the communication ain’t happenin’, then the paper needs to be redone.

Yes, it’s a bit subjective. But, as has already been stated, even engineers have to communicate their ideas, and often in writing. If they can’t communicate while their brains are in Science Mode, then they can’t be effective. That’s why writing can’t be strictly compartmentalized to the English department: someone who writes an intelligible paper to get the pass in English, but can’t use those skills in Science is not going to be a functional scientist.

…Heck, if nothing else, they’re probably going to have to write a grant proposal, sooner or later!

15

She’s supposed to think that she lacks basic literacy despite supposedly having a near-complete college education. Does she not have to read textbooks and published papers as part of her course work? Does she see those riddled with improperly punctuated sentences that a fifth-grader should be able to get right? Actually, she probably does, given the laxity that’s been creeping into publishing for the last couple of decades. And, since she doesn’t know how to punctuate a sentence properly, for all she knows the books and journals she reads are riddled with mistakes.

16

I think there is a balance–no grading on grammar suggests that good grammar doesn’t matter, which in the real world is not true. On the other hand, the quality of the thought process and the science should count for more than one’s comma placement.

But my engineering professors encouraged us to learn some style conventions of the world of engineering. And I had one professor who would point out more grammatical details in well-written lab reports than in poorly-written ones. His explanation was that the more effort you put into your work, the more effort he put into grading it. And so, a badly written short report would get a lousy grade and not much red ink, but a well-written longer report would get a good grade and often significant red ink. (Especially since persons turning in well-written long reports which got much red ink were frequently students for whom English was not their first language.)

17

I count organization more than grammar and spelling on in-class writing. Anything else of significance has organization, grammar, and spelling in the rubric, as well as correctly spelling my name, the student’s own name, the name of the class and its course number, and the names of any clients or subjects in a book or film.

18

Actually, I think that may be it. I recall one time, her showing me a sentence out of one of her text books that was just riddled with errors- I have no idea how it got by the editor, as it was BAD. She caught that and was quite proud of herself, but yeah.

19

I’m an English teacher, so having colleagues in other disciplines say that spelling, grammar and punctuation don’t matter really chaps my ass. But on a practical matter – what if the misspelling or poor grammar or poor punctuation results in an error in the lab? Would it be important then? And how can scientists share their findings if they can’t communicate with the rest of us?

20

I’m a physics grad student who also happens to enjoy and value good writing. I believe that the ability to communicate one’s ideas to others is an invaluable skill in any profession, technical or otherwise.
In short, my students are lucky that I have not yet had to grade anything requiring substantial writing. Physicists are some of the worst offenders in this regard, because physics coursework at both the undergraduate and graduate level often simply does not entail significant writing, and then what writing is done is not graded for grammar.